


Something in the Woods

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Series: South Park Drabble Bomb: May 2017 [3]
Category: South Park
Genre: Anxiety, Death, Graphic Description, Hallucinations, Horror, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Monsters, Murder, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 03:51:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11028033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: There was something in the woods that knew Stan's name.Submission for the first day of the May 2017 South Park Drabble Bomb: Forest. Rated M for implied sexual content, graphic violence, and death.





	Something in the Woods

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys. This is really rough. Proceed with extreme caution. Side note: I'm kind of sorry I've gotten so abstract with these.

There was something in the woods that knew Stan’s name. 

Stan knew nothing of it; Kyle hated to drag Stan into the delusions he occasionally entertained when his meds were not quite up to par. Every time he started to convince himself that it was nothing at all and he would simply need another visit to the psychiatrist, something strange would pop out from the trees and into Kyle’s ears to renew the superstition. Kyle had never been able to find it no matter how many times they wandered the trails within, but it was absolutely there. As absolute as the leaves on the trees and the poison ivy in the thicket, there was something in the woods that knew Stan’s name.

Stan did not take him camping often, if only because he knew he’d much rather enjoy a furnished cabin than a canvas tent and they just did not have the money for that luxury most times. That was not entirely true, as Kyle would enjoy any place that had Stan in it, but it made a convincing cover. Each time he did offer, Kyle put on a convincing smile, and he prepared himself for the anxiety that would keep his stomach aching and his eyes wide throughout the night as he heard the whispers from deep in the heart of the forest, which they were not far from. He didn’t know if it was dead or alive, if what whispered his name was a phantom or a grotesque mythical creature. He wasn’t sure which one would be better, but at the very least, Kyle knew that something corporeal would submit to the bat they kept at the opening to their tent if necessary. He was not going to die at the hands of something in the woods that knew Stan’s name. 

“What’s your number?” Stan asked him, and irritation flickered like a nasty blue flame in his belly. Stan only asked him his number when it seemed as though it was low. He’d caught on, and when he asked he gave only above average answers now, to get him off his back so he could handle his own health like an independent, fully functioning adult. The numbers made Kyle feel like a child, sitting in an uncomfortable doctor’s consultation room on sheets covered in little rainbow dinosaurs and with walls adorned with lackluster paintings. His doctors had very nice couches and complementary blankets now, having graduated from the hallways of wailing children into their own subdued, depressing offices. Kyle had tried to tell a doctor once, but he’d been put on pills that made him fall asleep standing up and lose track of his own words. Not even the doctors understood the very real threat in the woods that knew Stan’s name.

“I love you,” Stan said, as he so often did when surrounded by the warmth of a shoddy campfire and roasted marshmallows, and Kyle mimicked him in kind. They were easy words to say, no matter how he felt inside or out. That wasn’t to say he was lying, because he wasn’t. Kyle loved Stan very much. He just feared his name at times, feared the inflection, the single syllable, the one that spelled doom and despair from the shadows. It was the only word it knew, the thing in the woods that knew Stan’s name.

When the lights went down and the campfire was extinguished, they fell upon each other for their ceremonial fucking. It was the only time Kyle could not fully enjoy himself, and he hated it. He could never be off his guard here, where the whispers might come for him at any moment and threaten him, threaten Stan, threaten everything he had. It was a routine session that was not unlike any of the others, and Kyle tried his best to drown out his anxieties in their orgasms. When the moment passed, however, he was left with his back to Stan’s and entirely alone, save for the light snoring that echoed within and the loud crickets that echoed beyond. It was exactly the time to strike, if the creature so desired to crawl out from the void and chant in his ears again. He wished he knew what it wanted of him. The most terrifying thing was not knowing its intentions; only that it knew Stan’s name. 

It was well into the night when the first sound rattled him.  _ “Stan,” _ it hummed, lethargic but horribly clear, and every muscle in his body tensed. He held his breath as long as he could manage before he had to take in shaky gulps of air, because it could definitely hear him breathing, hear his heartbeat and the rushing of his blood through his veins. It could hear him and he had no way to protect himself, paralyzed on the air mattress with the voice’s target just beside him.  _ “Stan,”  _ it repeated, and Kyle stifled a whimper. It was closer, louder this time, and he swore he could see shadows creeping along the walls of the tent, monsters with huge paws and gouging claws and gaping jaws.  _ “Stan!”  _ it gasped, and Kyle was sure of it, that he was now in the presence of the thing in the woods that knew Stan’s name. 

He rolled from the bed and snuck for the bat, ready to strike whatever horrors awaited that chanted in his ringing ears. It goaded and giggled, cried and cackled, growled and groaned. It was too close, entirely too close, and he had no choice but to leave the tent with the bat in hand and protect his Stan, his entire world, from this mysterious thing that knew Stan’s name. 

Something rattled in the trees and he shot his focus upward, his knuckles white around the handle and his eyes dry from refusing to blink. There was nothing visible but he could swear it was there. He’d heard it so clearly, too close! Then, every sound around him became numb silence, and he could hear nothing but his own breaths and his own heartbeat and his own blood rushing through his veins. It was so horribly dark, horribly dark.  _ “Kyle?” _ it echoed, in this world with only him and this creature in it. It had learned his name now too, oh God. A twig snapped and Kyle tore himself in its direction, to find a pitch black, undefined  _ thing _ in the woods that knew Stan’s name.

With a battle cry he rushed to it and brought the bat down upon its head as swiftly and hard as he could manage. It held its arms up in surrender but Kyle paid it no heed, for it had threatened him and had to die. It screeched and yelled and hissed, its mouth agape with tiny fangs bared. Kyle hit it again and again, determined to take it down, and when it crumpled on the forest floor he continued to smash it, bash it, crash into it with all his weight. More than anything else in his life, he needed to kill this thing in the woods that knew Stan’s name.

The splatters that were as black as its silhouette had painted his arms with ugly oily grime. Kyle stopped his barrage, letting the bat rest in the concave skull of the monster he’d vanquished. Pride surged through him in the afterglow of adrenaline, and slowly, the sounds of the forest returned. He smiled, for he was safe, and there was no more thing in the woods that knew Stan’s name.

He dropped the bat and dragged his feet back to the tent to tell his valiant story. Surely the commotion had woken Stan, and he’d be expecting an explanation. Kyle ducked his head through the entrance but found nothing but an empty air mattress, disturbed sheets twisting like thorny roses. “Stan?” he asked, but there was no answer. He felt around for the flashlight to find him, and when it clicked on, the black sludge from the monster he’d destroyed turned a frightening red. He gasped. 

 

He turned around to the corpse left beaten and bloodied. 

 

The corpse that was not a monster, not a phantom, but a man. 

 

A man with an old fundraiser shirt and plaid pajama bottoms.

 

A man who no longer bore a face. 

 

“Stan..?”

 

 

Kyle was the thing in the woods that knew Stan’s name.

**Author's Note:**

> I warned you.


End file.
